The Methuselah Hunters
by Lt. Commander Richie
Summary: They're in disguise- again. They're running for their lives- again. They're being shot at- again. He's giving her a history lecture in the process- again. Rose just wanted to see the Vatican. The Doctor took her to the Vatican in 3065. This'll end well.
1. Chapter 1

**The Methuselah Hunters**

_Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **Doctor Who is property of BBC, Trinity Blood of Sunao Yoshida (may he rest in peace). It's their sandboxes full of toys, and while they're inside for lunch I'm the angry neighbor kid that jumps the fence and puts their action figures in compromising positions.

**Warnings: **Humor, completely made up jargon, an awful lot of running, the requisite 10/Rose flirting and spoilers for Trinity Blood up to but not into Know Faith/Silent Noise and Who up through but not surpassing "The Satan Pit". Disregards the timeline of the varying Great and Bountiful Human Empires because I am lazy. Contains 10 and Rose trussed up in artbook Trinity Blood uniforms (feel free to laugh and/or fangasm).

**A/N: **I am a bad person and I love it. I've also combined Firefly and Bleach before, though the internet is never seeing that. SO YES! Two of my favorite things, Trinity Blood being an old favorite and Doctor Who being a brand new one, combined into one thing! This will either end very well or very badly. Allons-_y_!

**Story most likely best read on 3/4 or 1/2 page width. **

* * *

Rose Tyler really hated heels at the moment. They were pretty for a quiet night out, and made her legs look plenty nice, but they were hell to run in. This she was finding out very quickly, cursing all the while.

The high-gloss white marble floors she was attempting to find purchase on weren't much better, especially when she attempted to take corners too fast.

She screamed as a bullet hit the floor next to her, shards of white marble flying into the air and leaving stinging spots on her arms and what parts of her legs were exposed. In one gloved hand she held a handful of white skirt and petticoat, keeping the massive amount of fabric out of the way as she booked it down the beautiful hallway of the Vatican she found herself in. In her other hand was one of the Doctor's, his firm grip pulling her along and keeping her steady as they ran.

"_This _is the Vatican in 3060?" The two took a corner faster than her heels could handle, and Rose skidded for a moment as she shouted. Another shot rang out, and more marble sprayed into the air as the bullet hit the floor where the blond had been a split second before. Before their pursuers could take aim again the duo were gone down the adjacent hallway, their footsteps loud in the surprisingly empty halls.

"_Technically_," the Doctor began, eyes searching for another exit as the yells of their pursuers got louder around the corner they had just turned, "it's the year 3065." He stopped still, eyebrows furrowing deeply as he took in the gold inlay of the white walls and the large columns that surrounded them on all sides. "_Well, _more like 3070. The human race lost quite a bit of time during Armageddon, and they're only _just _coming out of their Dark Ages. They'll figure out the discrepancy just in time for the First Great and Bountiful Human Empire, I think."

A bullet impacted the white marble column just next to his head, spraying shards of stone in every direction. The two companions ducked, his oddly somber black Converse with the gold laces getting enough purchase on the marble to start the two off running again. Rose, lacking anything better to do, hiked her massive skirt up a bit farther and dug the armored toes of her white high-heeled boots into the marble in hopes of getting better purchase. It seemed to do the trick, because the strength of the pull the Doctor was exerting on her arm seemed to lessen as she hit a pace slightly closer to his. With a bang a hole punched through the Time Lord's long black cloak, dangerously close to his arm. The two continued running, Rose risking a look behind her to see how close their pursuers were.

The impeccably-dressed Vatican guards behind them were continuing at a clipped pace, three rifles leveling at the escaping duo before firing simultaneously.

Rose let out something she refused to admit was a squeak as a hole matching the one in the Doctor's black cloak was punched in the white fabric of her wimple, dangerously close to her _head_.

The two took another corner at a breakneck pace, nearly toppling over on the slick marble before the Doctor spotted a door and ran straight towards it. It was a small affair designed to blend in with the rest of the hallway, the gold inlay and white paint only differing enough to make it noticeable to scrutiny. With all the urgency of a man being chased by more men with guns, he wrenched the door open and shoved Rose inside before following her in and shutting it behind them. In an instant his sonic screwdriver was out and in his hand, the lock of the door clicking closed just in time for the platoon of armed guards to run past with a thundering roar of yells and boots on marble. The noise in the hallway eventually petered down to silence, the din of the guards fading off into the distance as they turned another corner in hopes of catching their quarry. Together, Rose and the Doctor breathed a deep sigh of relief.

"This whole place is mad," Rose finally said. She dropped her long white skirt and let it swish around her ankles, using both hands instead to find a switch or pull cord to turn on a light.

"I wouldn't say that, more like justifiably paranoid." With a click the one swinging bulb overhead came on, throwing their surroundings into light and illuminating their current predicament. "_Well_," he amended, looking thoughtful, "justifiably paranoid and preemptively acting on it in a rather vexingly military fashion." Rose sat down on the lid of a five-gallon bucket and the Doctor did the same with a small wheeled stepladder, the two catching their breath from the sudden sprint they had been forced to do. All the running hadn't been made any better by the seemingly random pieces of armor that adorned their clothes, silver on her nun's habit and gold on his priestly cassock and cloak. Her breathing slowing, Rose began to fiddle with a superfluous-looking silver cord that attached to one of the buttons at her waist and ended in a strand of beads akin to a rosary with an ornate cross at the end. Neither half of the duo was particularly happy dressed as they were, but they had acknowledged the disguises as a necessary evil to see the inside of the Vatican without arousing too much suspicion.

Not that it had worked, unfortunately.

"Armored priests an' nuns, security that shoots first an' asks questions never, Armageddon-" Rose seemed to pause as her eyebrows knit together, a question in her eyes as she looked back up at the Doctor. He too was fiddling with the armor that seemed to hang off of every part of his outfit, though he was more interested in the rosary hanging from the armored bits at his neck and chest than the multitude of them that hung from his belts. "Y' don't think something's wrong here, yeah?"

"Nope." The Doctor popped the P at the end of the word, looking up at his blond companion from where he was still fiddling with the ornate gold cross at the end of the rosary at his neck. "This is exactly how it should be. It's actually rather fantastic, once you think about it! Most of the Earth is currently an uninhabitable wasteland and most of the world died during Armageddon, yet still human beings have managed to survive! You really don't know how to give up, do you?" Without waiting for Rose's response, he continued at a thousand miles an hour. "I mean, in just a few years you'll be creating the First Great and Bountiful Human Empire and space travel will be pioneered by Albion's scientists. With that opened up, the entire _galaxy_ becomes your playground! Human beings reach for the stars for the first time in a thousand years and they find other cultures reaching back! It's _brilliant_!" Rose smiled, nodding along as the Time Lord continued to babble. She fiddled with her cufflinks for a moment as he spoke, waiting for him to finish on his own. When he didn't show any sign of stopping, she took it into her own hands.

"An' you jus' wanna stay in a broom cupboard the entire time?" The blonde's interjection made the Doctor stop short, a wide smile on his face as he stood up with a clicking of metal rosaries and armor and dusted off his long black cloak.

"No, I don't believe I do." With a flourish the Doctor pulled his sonic screwdriver from a pocket in his cloak, unlocking the door with a loud clunk and pushing it open to survey the large white hallway. It was deserted except for the two of them, and the duo made their way out of the broom closet before closing the door and heading in the opposite direction from the guards that had chased them. Cautiously they made their way to the next hallway junction, taking a moment to decide which way to go before choosing a hallway at random and continuing down it. Rose swished her skirts and then twirled several times, laughing as the skirt fanned out with a swoosh and then settled back down.

"Is this really what nuns wear in _3060_?" Rose asked, carefully enunciating the year as she smiled widely. It was probably the third or fourth time she had asked, but the blond still didn't seem to believe it. "I feel like some kind'a warrior princess in all this armor an' this skirt, not a religious woman!" The Doctor offered one arm to her, gold armor on his forearm and large cuffs glinting in the hallway's lights as he smiled brightly.

"Quite right too, _Dame _Rose Marion Tyler." The blond in question grinned again, a hint of tongue sticking out between her teeth as she linked her arm with his and the two continued on their way. "Now! What part of the Vatican do you want to see first? We have successfully evaded capture and have the run of the entire place! Our disguises, such as they are, are flawless. Anywhere you want to go, we can get there!"

Rose looked genuinely thoughtful as the pair walked down the beautiful hallway, the faint and dull roar of far-off conversation adding a comforting background noise to the scenery. She took in that scenery, the ageless craftsmanship of the building around her, and shrugged.

"Those two nuns that got through the gates 'fore us were talkin' 'bout a special Mass tonight, the Pope's conductin' it for a couple foreign dignitaries. Y'think we could go see th' Pope?" The Doctor's attention focused towards the ceiling for a moment as they walked, and he made a great show of hemming and hawing over the suggestion before coming to his decision.

"_Oh_ I don't see why not. Should be fun!" The two laughed for a moment before the Doctor looked thoughtful, eyebrows furrowing slightly as his vision shifted from the blond at his side to the floor and then back towards the ceiling before alighting on Rose once again. "If I remember correctly, 3065 means the _399__th_ Pope of Rome. That would be…" The Doctor trailed off, an eyebrow rising in tandem with both of Rose's as she watched him shift through a myriad of facial expressions. He finally settled on his wide and manic smile, conveying happiness immeasurable at his realization. "Well that'd be Pope Alessandro XVIII! _Brilliant_!"

"What's so brilliant 'bout him?" Rose couldn't help but ask, and suddenly found both her hands held by the Time Lord next to her as they spun once in the hallway with their fingers laced together. The Doctor drew her in close with the momentum, as if he was about to tell her a massive secret.

"He's fifteen." Rose's eyes went wide at that, leaning in closer with a smile playing on her lips until their noses were just barely touching. The Doctor smiled back, the two of them just barely holding back laughter like they were wont to do.

"No!" Her voice was a conspiratorial whisper, full of unbridled excitement at the concept. "Y' lyin'!"

"It's true!" The Doctor jumped back, rosaries and armor clicking and tinkling together like a beanpole-shaped wind chime. "Cross my hearts an' hope to die!" He paused at that, reconsidering his words as Rose watched with a toothy smile breaking across her features. "Well maybe not _die_, wouldn't want that. Cross my hearts an' hope to- no, wouldn't want that either. Hmmm." Rose looked vastly amused at the spectacle before her, tongue sticking between her teeth as the Doctor's excitement became palpable.

"He's really-" she began, only to get cut off as the Doctor clapped his gloved hands together once and fixed her with a sudden and oddly somber look. The change in moods was drastic and surprising, but nothing out of the ordinary.

"Fifteen," he affirmed. "Most powerful man in the world an' he's fifteen years old." Immediately the somber look was gone, and he offered his arm to his blond companion once again with a smile. She took it and the two began walking, resuming their original course down the large white hallway. "Now!" The Doctor spoke again after a moment, a ball of energy if ever there was one as he wore his smile again. "That Mass isn't until tonight, an' there's probably two or three dozen different places I could show you between now and then that you will positively _love_. Shall we?" Rose smiled up at the Time Lord in response, giving a gentle tug on his arm as she stepped ahead of him.

"What're we waitin' for?" She asked, and the two laughed before continuing down the beautiful halls of the Vatican.

* * *

**What am I even doing oh god what is this crossover it should never have been done**

**But I'm doing it anyway :D**

**Next update will be when I feel like it, which could very well be sometime next month. I want to finish the last two chapters before I really start posting like a madwoman. I doubt anyone will be reading this anyway, so it's not like I'll be updating for an audience. **


	2. Chapter 2

**The Methuselah Hunters**

_Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **Doctor Who is property of BBC, Trinity Blood of Sunao Yoshida (may he rest in peace). It's their sandboxes full of toys, and while they're inside for lunch I'm the angry neighbor kid that jumps the fence and puts their action figures in compromising positions.

**Warnings: **Humor, completely made up jargon, an awful lot of running, the requisite 10/Rose flirting and spoilers for Trinity Blood up to but not into Know Faith/Silent Noise and Who up through but not surpassing "The Satan Pit". Disregards the timeline of the varying Great and Bountiful Human Empires because I am lazy. Contains 10 and Rose trussed up in artbook Trinity Blood uniforms (feel free to laugh and/or fangasm).

**A/N: **I am a bad person and I love it. I've also combined Firefly and Bleach before, though the internet is never seeing that. SO YES! Two of my favorite things, Trinity Blood being an old favorite and Doctor Who being a brand new one, combined into one thing! This will either end very well or very badly. Allons-_y_!

**Story most likely best read in 3/4 or 1/2 page width.**

* * *

-/-

"What's 'AX'?" Rose's question made the Doctor stop short halfway through an explanation of the history of the garden they stood in, full of decorative greenery and beautiful flowers and a large stone angel that the Time Lord didn't seem to want to turn his back on. He looked at the blond in the white nun's habit like she had just used Descartes' _Compendium Musicae _to explain why her mother enjoyed hitting him as much as she did. "Don't you look at me like that; 's on your armor. S'it on mine too?" Rose offered up the oddly-shaped piece on her upper right arm for scrutiny, and after a moment the Doctor nodded.

"It's short for 'Papal State Affairs Special Operations Section'- in Latin, 'course. Says so 'round the edge of the piece on your back with the strands hanging off it." The Doctor's eyebrows furrowed as he took that in for a moment, before he shrugged and let go of the blonde's arm. "'course that means we're impersonating members of the AX, which won't go over so well if we're caught," Rose put her gloved fists on her hips, facing down the Doctor with a small smile playing at the edge of her mouth as she tried to look disbelieving.

"An' you just happen to have _Vatican Special Ops._ uniforms layin' 'round in the TARDIS' wardrobe?" The Doctor smiled at this, and Rose couldn't help but take his arm again as he swung them around to continue walking in the opposite direction towards an ornate gazebo. "D'ya moonlight as an officer of the Vatican while I'm sleepin', then?"

"_Oh _I'd never do _that_. Too many enemies, no paycheck, very high chance of death, alien vampires-" he paused for a moment and Rose let out something akin to a giggling and unladylike snerk as she caught on to his train of thought. "I already do that. Huh." Without a hitch in his stride the Doctor shook it off with a noncommittal shrug.

The duo passed under a large wrought-iron arch into the ornate gazebo and sat down, Rose immediately massaging one of her feet through her white high-heeled boot. She grumbled about the armor on the shoes before unlacing them and pulling them off and sitting back, the two companions watching each other with vague amusement as they tried to get comfortable on the stone bench while stuck in such bespangled disguises. Rose pulled off her wimple and stuck one gloved finger through the hole that had been shot in it, and then pulled at the Doctor's cloak until he shifted over and she pulled it out from under him to hold it up to the light. There were three bullet holes in it of varying sizes, and a grommet was missing from the edge.

"How d'you suppose th' guards saw through the psychic paper?" Rose couldn't help but muse on the subject, toeing one of her armored boots with a stocking foot. The socks didn't match her habit in the slightest, being garishly pink and blue striped toe socks. One of the boots fell over and she righted it with her feet, demonstrating an amazing amount of dexterity.

"Oh I dunno," the Doctor began, surveying the decorative latticework above them before giving the stink-eye to a decorative statue about thirty feet away and surrounded by hedges. "It _probably _has something to do with the fact that they're _Vatican _guards, though. In an age where the church is actively participating in a Cold War with an Empire of _vampires_ I'd imagine they all have at least a minimum amount of psychic training." Looking quite a sight with his messy hair and tall cloak collar covered in gold armor pieces, the Doctor suddenly turned to his blond companion with a _look _that spoke of urgency. "That reminds me," his tone became exceedingly grim as he continued, grabbing Rose's gloved hand with one of his own. "Steer clear of the Inquisition. Anyone in red robes, and I mean _anyone_, make sure they don't notice you and _run _in the opposite direction. The Cardinals all wear red robes too, but you ought to steer clear of them anyway so the rule still stands. Understood?" Rose nodded, her wide-eyed blue gaze conveying that she got the hint- the Inquisition was capitalized Bad News.

With that out of the way they lapsed back into comfortable companionable silence, still holding hands as they listened to birdsong in the garden. Rose wiggled her toes in the fresh air, smiling lightly at the absurd look of her childish socks clashing with the white and blue of her habit and the silver accouterments that festooned the garment. Her free hand found the rosary looped around her neck, picking up the mid-sized silver cross and holding it up to see. A gold pattern like stardust gradated across the surface with a large pink jewel as the centerpiece. The beads were light pink pearls with interspersed gold spacers, and the entire thing looked far too rich to belong to a nun. But then again, there she was in a very white and blue habit with a beautiful skirt covered in blue lace and completely decked out in seemingly random pieces of silver armor. The Doctor's cassock and cloak weren't much better, having even more armor and random fiddly bits than hers and all in _gold _as well.

"So…" Rose began, setting her rosary back down on her lap and looking up at the Doctor. His attention snapped to her, the usual amount of unbridled excitement shining behind his eyes. "_Papal State Affairs Special Operations Section_," the blond said the words like she thought the Time Lord might have made it up. "What is it?" The Doctor shifted uncomfortably at that, like a squirming schoolboy trying to get out of speaking in front of the class. Rose's lips curled into a smile at that, and she leaned her head on his shoulder and batted her eyelashes at him in a pleading gesture. When the Doctor's face turned to one of slightly exasperated acquiescence her smile grew into a grin, a hint of tongue peeking between her teeth in a cheeky manner.

"They're the Special Ops. portion of the Ministry of Holy Affairs, run by Cardinal Caterina Sforza. We shouldn't run into any of them since they're all field agents, but we ought to be careful," at Rose's slightly confused raised eyebrow, he continued. "For the purposes of explanation, they've all got…" Surprisingly, the Doctor seemed to grapple for a word for a moment. His attention focused on the ornate ceiling of the gazebo before falling back down to Rose. "Well I don't suppose there's any point in beating around the bush- most of 'em 'ave got abilities and skills that any normal human being would call super powers." Rose gave him a disbelieving look, leaning away from him but not letting go of his hand. The Doctor returned the look with a pinch of cheeky sarcasm at the edge, and the blond couldn't decide if she should be laughing or being as serious as he had been.

"An' you're _sure _there's nothing wrong here? No _aliens_ masquerading as human to their own _nefarious_ ends?" The blond kicked her feet out as she spoke, making her toe socks visible and her large skirt swish in a cloud of white and blue.

"Of course not! They may have a man that can turn invisible _and _a woman that can walk through _walls_, but it's all the result of purely _human _scientific advancement! The only thing _alien _on this _entire _planet right now is the bacillus that makes the Methuselah- that's what the vampires call themselves- vampires and _me_." The Doctor managed to look inordinately proud of himself at that, settling back in his seat with a broad grin on his face.

"So all we've got to worry 'bout is _vampires_ an' the _Inquisition_?" Opening his mouth to respond to the blonde's question, the Doctor was cut off by a sudden and surprised-sounding scream. He was instantly on his feet in a clicking and tinkling of metal and rosaries, running for the source with Rose in tow. She voiced protests as loud as she could about the fact that she wasn't wearing shoes but they fell on deaf ears. The duo rounded a large decorative hedge to come face-to face with a young nun in a blue novice's habit; her long light hair tinted a light pink shade. She was sprawled in a tangle on the ground along with a set of white wrought-iron chairs and a table, looking indignant as a nun could in such a situation and valiantly attempting to remove herself from the predicament.

Rose fixed the Doctor with a _look _and went to get her shoes before she ruined her nice socks.

When she returned, her boots firmly on her feet and laced, the Doctor was helping the young girl set the table and chairs upright again with a laugh. The girl looked rather intimidated by his presence, her large bright green eyes open as wide as they would go but refusing to quite look right at him. With the garden furniture righted once again she stood awkwardly, those same wide eyes fixed on the toes of her shoes as she fiddled with the somewhat plain turquoise and silver rosary around her neck with gloved fingers.

"Forgive me, Father, I didn' mean t' disturb you or y' friend." The girl's voice was a willowy and shallow-sounding Northern burr, shaking like she might snap at any moment. The Doctor smiled widely, trying to put her at ease, but the girl just shook a little harder and redoubled the intensity of the gaze she was giving the ground. The Time Lord swept his cloak back behind his arms and shoved his hands into the pockets of his black pants, rocking back on his heels for a moment.

"_Oh _that's quite alright. No harm done!" The novice looked up carefully, her green eyes full of unbridled curiosity as they shifted from Rose to the Doctor and back again before taking them both in at a distance. "We were actually just about to go, weren't we?" The Doctor turned to Rose and she turned to him, both of them wearing the same questioning expression. "…Sister Tyler?"

"Ah… Yeah. We were just leavin'." Rose's eyes flicked to the novice, whose green gaze was still boring holes in them. The Doctor seemed to shrug it off easily enough, but something about it felt _off _to his blond companion.

"To the security meetin' 'er Grace jus' called?" Immediately the pink-haired girl squeaked and put her hands over her mouth, conveying very well that she probably shouldn't have known about said meeting. In that slight moment the girl's voice had gained an inquisitive strength, not tinted by fear or willowy and frail. "'m sorry!" slipped out between her fingers, and she backed up a step. "I shouldn' know 'bout that! Please, don' tell anyone! I didn't mean ta 'ear, honest!"

"Our secret." The Doctor's smile was a conspiring one, and it seemed to put the pink-haired novice at ease. She let out a long and careful sigh, her shoulders visibly slumping. "Now! You ought to be running along, yeah? You've prolly got duties an' other such things to attend to, an' I don't want to keep you!" The statement was accompanied by a quick wink, and the novice blushed lightly with widening eyes before curtseying deeply to the two companions and turning tail. She was a blue and pinkish-blond flash as she ran from the garden, a moment passing before a door opened and closed in the distance. When the two were quite sure that the novice was gone the Doctor offered his arm to his companion, the beginnings of a wide and cheeky grin playing at his features.

"What's got you so happy, then?" Rose asked, taking his arm in hers with a small clicking of their respective armor. The blonde's own smile was threatening the edges of her lips, and her eyebrows rose as she was tugged lightly in a semi-circle until the unshakable duo were facing down a brand new path through the garden.

"I know exactly where I'll take you next. You'll love it!" The grin finally burst over the Time Lord's features and infected his friend, and the blond smiled as well and gestured down the thin cobblestone walkway. With a laugh they started off, all semblance of formality in their linked arms dissolving away as they both dropped any pretenses and threaded their fingers through each other's.

-/-

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**Most excellent, yes? No? Eh. Whatevs. **

**Review if you like it, review if you don't.  
**


	3. Chapter 3

**The Methuselah Hunters**

_Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **Doctor Who is property of BBC, Trinity Blood of Sunao Yoshida (may he rest in peace). It's their sandboxes full of toys, and while they're inside for lunch I'm the angry neighbor kid that jumps the fence and puts their action figures in compromising positions.

**Warnings: **Humor, completely made up jargon, an awful lot of running, the requisite 10/Rose flirting and spoilers for Trinity Blood up to but not into Know Faith/Silent Noise and Who up through but not surpassing "The Satan Pit". Disregards the timeline of the varying Great and Bountiful Human Empires because I am lazy. Contains 10 and Rose trussed up in artbook Trinity Blood uniforms (feel free to laugh and/or fangasm).

**A/N: **I am a bad person and I love it. I've also combined Firefly and Bleach before, though the internet is never seeing that. SO YES! Two of my favorite things, Trinity Blood being an old favorite and Doctor Who being a brand new one, combined into one thing! This will either end very well or very badly. Allons-_y_!

**Best read on 3/4 or 1/2 width.**

_Chapter 3_**  
**

* * *

-/-

"Explain to me why it is, exactly, that you are not currently dead or awaiting interrogation by the Inquisition." The beautifully striking woman behind the desk had a rather fearsome edge to her voice as she addressed her two captives, her delicately gloved fingers steepled in front of her fine chin. The lush red and gold garments of a Cardinal she wore only accentuated her rather fearsome beauty, as did the monocle she had delicately perched over her right eye. The Doctor and Rose tried to share a wary glance, but neither dared move because of the large guns aimed at painful and disabling regions of their bodies.

"If I _'ad_ to hazard a guess, which I _imagine_ I do given the current situation- I would really 'ave to say it's because you, Your Grace, are a _very_ understanding and _patient_ woman not particularly given to completely rash decisions like _shooting_ supposed imposters on top of what appears to be a _very_ nice Persian rug that would no doubt cost _quite_ a bit of time and money to have blood scrubbed out of," the Doctor's statement inflected into what almost sounded like a question for a moment at the end, and Rose risked a quick and somewhat cross glance at him. If the icily beautiful Cardinal found the Time Lord's conjecture to be at all amusing, her ironclad visage certainly did not betray that.

"Usually this is true," her large blond curls shifting about and red and gold fabric whispering over itself, the Cardinal reached out one gloved hand and picked up her teacup as she spoke. "But at the moment I find myself _slightly_ preoccupied by the seemingly inescapable problem of two people that are most certainly not of the priesthood or sisterhood impersonating two officers of my Special Operations Section." With that said she took a long sip of the steaming liquid at then sat the white and gold china back down with all the grace of a woman of very high breeding and status. The Doctor had the grace to look slightly caught and maybe an inkling of guilty, but the expression was gone as soon as it had arrived. Rose's look took a little longer to fade away, but she mirrored the same general uneasiness of a child that had been caught with their hand in the proverbial cookie jar.

"There's a…" Rose trailed off for a moment, her blue eyes flicking from the impeccably-dressed Cardinal to the Time Lord beside her and then slightly further back to catch a slight glimpse of the short-ish russet-haired man with the guns and blank expression behind them. She swallowed in a manner that could be construed as nerves, before her attention turned back to the treacherously beautiful Cardinal behind the large desk. "We got a perfectly good explanation. Really," she finished lamely, shooting a very pointed look at the Doctor in hopes that he would pick up where she left off. Something that was almost halfway to amusement briefly flickered across the face of the blond in red behind the desk, before her eyebrows knit just barely downward in a slightly unamused fashion.

The Doctor, after a brief moment of awkward and slightly confused floundering in which he somewhat resembled a fish, nodded resolutely.

"As you _may_ have noticed, Your Grace, the both of us are from Albion. I have _no _doubt in my _very_ considerable and quite frankly rather _terrifyingly_ brilliant mind that you know without a doubt that Albion is the _capitol_ of the civilized world as far as Pre-Armageddon Technology is concerned. The whole _country_ is _completely_ and _fantastically_ advanced because of this and I say that with no small amount of pride because quite frankly I love that tiny island and I've put _more_ than my fair share of work into it!" The Doctor's babbling continued with all the force of a busted-open faucet without a handle, and Rose stifled a sigh as she shifted from one foot to the other in her rather vexing heels. Trust the Doctor to babble like a madman in a half-convincing manner while simultaneously thinking up a plan that would no doubt be abandoned just inside of twenty minutes. The blond froze as the large gun trained at a non-vital but still very painful part of her anatomy made a noise that sounded both very loud and very threatening. "_Oi_! You'll not be threatening Rose with that barbarically _stupid_ piece of outdated projectile weaponry, thank you _very_ much!"

"Not _helpin'_!" she hissed at him, otherwise holding as still as she possibly could while barely wavering on her heels. The Doctor completely ignored her angry admonishment, preferring instead to flash the Cardinal his very wide and brilliant Cheshire cat grin.

"Your Grace, my partner and I are from the future." With that bombshell dropped, the Cardinal's office seemed to erupt into chaos. By the door, an older gentleman smoking a large pipe inhaled incorrectly and began coughing uncontrollably. The slightly see-through woman floating to the left of the Cardinal's desk, lightly tinted blue by the properties of her holographic form, gasped loudly and with enough shock evident that a flicker lanced through her digital form. A few yells of indignation and disbelief went up throughout the room, the loudest being from the rather swarthy Spanish man with the massive mane of black hair and the silver-haired man with the glasses. The somewhat vertically-challenged russet-haired man with the guns said nothing, his visage unchanged by the revelation.

Rose gave the Doctor a look that quite plainly told him with no uncertainty that he had _better_ have a plan to go along with that blurb of technically-inaccurate information.

"Enough!" With a yell, Cardinal Caterina Sforza stood from her chair and pounded a fist on the desk in front of her. The uncharacteristic display of anger was enough to quiet the entire room. At some point the monocle had fallen from the woman's eye, and she replaced it carefully before straightening and surveying the room with livid steel-gray eyes. "I have had enough of this foolishness. You will cease with this rampant stupidity and obvious telling of lies and you will _tell me why you are here_! No matter your intentions or feelings on the matter at hand, I am _not _amused!" Rose and the Doctor, laughter in their eyes at the woman's choice of words, shared a sly look before returning their attention to the angry Cardinal.

"Your Grace?" Her addressing sounded a little unsure, but Rose didn't back down as she spoke. "I swea', we are who we say we are." Her blue eyes flitted to the Doctor's brown ones for a split second, and she drew a little strength from the warmth and faith she saw in them. "I'm Sister Rose Tyler, from Westminster. He's Father John Smith, from Lancashire. We really are members of th' clergy."

"I've got our identification in one of my pockets, Your Grace. If y'like I could get it out-" the Doctor went for one of his pockets and like that the entire room was bristling with weapons. The gun aimed at him by the russet-haired Father cocked, and he found himself aimed at by three other pistols of varying caliber by the gentleman with the pipe, the beautiful black-haired nun in the suspender belt and stockings and the silver-haired man with the glasses. "Oi! Can a man not get somethin' outta 'is _pockets_ in this day an' age or somethin'?" With a chagrined look on his face, the Doctor's hand went back up into plain view of the rest of the room. Cardinal Sforza gestured to the silver-haired man with the glasses and he holstered his antique pistol before taking the Doctor's cloak in hand and reaching into the inside pocket. A puzzled expression flitted across his face before he reached farther, and then farther, and then all the way up to his shoulder in surprise.

"You've got a hole in your pocket, you know," the priest said conversationally, a child-like smile gracing his features as he groped around in the pocket that he assumed went all the way to the bottom edge of the Doctor's nearly floor-length cloak. After a moment of searching he withdrew a handful of papers and a brown and gold ID card. While he had been having adventures in the Doctor's pocket the pretty nun in the suspender belt and stockings had swiftly gone through Rose's much smaller pockets and produced a similar ID card and a small handful of Rokklummish currency. The green coins looked a bit like poker chips, and the nun raised a beautifully-sculpted eyebrow at them before depositing the handful back in the pocket she had found it in. Cardinal Sforza accepted the two ID cards and the wad of papers, surveying them through her monocle with a steadily rising eyebrow.

"These are impressive fakes," she said after a moment, sinking back down into her chair and crossing her legs under the desk. "But your forger has mistaken the date. Both your ID and documentation have tomorrow's date on them."

"Tha's 'cause you don't issue those to us until tomorrow," at Cardinal Sforza's lightly incredulous look, the Doctor elaborated with a very put-upon look gracing his features. "Sister Tyler an' I are time travelers. You've not given those to us yet relative to your own time stream, but accordin' to our own non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint just outside of time we've been agents of the Papal State Affairs Special Operations Section for… what, quite a while, yeah?" The Doctor turned to Rose then, a silent and invisible plea for her to play along in his raised eyebrow. She gave a resolute nod, her hands flying to her wimple as it finally came loose and nearly fell from her head.

"I'm sorry, but I find myself unable to stand by without interjecting at this point," the older gentleman with the pipe finally spoke up, tapping said pipe on the side of the hand that clutched his cane before placing the end in his mouth and taking a puff. "You both claim to be time travelers, yet all you have to substantiate your rather outlandish claims are ID cards and documentation with badly forged dates on them. Why should we trust anything you have to say? You must know very well that the Vatican does not deal kindly with imposters, especially of its Special Operations agents. I'm sorry to say, but you could very well be lying through your teeth to save your own skins." The air in the lavish office of the Cardinal seemed stiff and thick as the gentleman of Albion finished speaking, and he took another puff of his pipe for good measure. After a moment the Doctor's face broke into a grin so wide it could probably break his chin right off. He opened his mouth to speak, looking as positively elated as he did when he came across some vexing piece of machinery or a particularly clever piece of human ingenuity.

"They're not forgeries, Your Grace," from her space in the air next to the Cardinal's desk, the holographic nun worked at an equally-holographic floating console in front of her. Through the translucent light blue pixels the whole room could see that the woman had called up scans and data on the ID cards and documentation that the silver haired priest had pulled from the Doctor's pocket. "This is your signature and handwriting on _your _stationary, and these ID cards register in the Vatican databases. Both cards return Certificate of Authenticity error messages that cite that the information was electronically dated tomorrow and as such cannot be read until then. My systems aren't registering any codes or programs out of the ordinary that might be forcing the display of the error. If these _are _forgeries, they are the best I have ever seen."

A silence seemed to blanket the room, and Rose shuffled a little in her heels in a way that she hoped didn't look very suspect.

It was rather rudely broken by an explosion loud enough that it rattled the windows to the left of the Cardinal's desk and made ripples appear in her teacup.

Smoke began to rise over the dome of Saint Peter's Basilica, the angle meaning that the explosion had been in the Square. The room erupted into chaos, a good portion of the AX operatives present rushing for the door in a cacophony of robes and armor and shouts. Heedless of the gun aimed at his vital regions by the diminutive but stocky russet-haired Father, the Doctor took a step forward and slammed his hands onto the desk to look Cardinal Sforza in the eyes.

"We are _your _operatives, Your Grace. Direct us as you will- whatever that explosion was you'll need all the help you can _get_," his voice was calm in the sea of madness that was the Cardinal's lavish office. But despite the din he could be heard quite clearly, and his brown eyes for a moment conveyed the kind of seriousness and depth that the Cardinal did not see often. The blond woman looked obstinate for a long moment, her ironclad eyes narrowed dangerously behind her monocle. One fine gloved hand fisted in the red and gold panels of her skirt, taking a good portion of the white underskirt with it.

"Your Grace?" The holographic nun looked apprehensive as she spoke, one translucent hand fisting around the equally-translucent crucifix on her rosary. When no answer was given, the nun blinked out of existence. The silence between the two at the desk went on for only a moment longer before Cardinal Sforza made a sound that was almost a snort of derision, but she was far too dignified to make any such noise. Her hand let go of her skirt, and she picked up the two ID cards from her desk and held them out with a steely expression still fixed on her face.

"Father Smith, I don't pretend to know why I'm doing something as monumentally stupid as this will no doubt turn out to be. As of right now, yourself and Sister Tyler are provisional agents of my Special Operations Section." With a humorless look, the Cardinal dropped the ID cards into the proffered hand of the man in question. He smiled widely at her actions, the act lending a very Cheshire-esque quality to his countenance. He opened his mouth to say something, but she cut him off. "If you make me even so much as _begin_ to regret this, you will be given to Cardinal di'Medici's Inquisition without so much as paperwork filed. You do not exist- not yet, at least- and when people do not exist people do not look for them when they disappear." The threat hung, very credible, in the air between the two parties.

"Your Grace, I'm just now registering an unidentified aircraft in Vatican airspace through what appears to be heavy shielding. It's been dealt a good amount of damage- shall I shoot it down or apprehend it myself?" The holographic nun blinked back into existence- this time to the right of the Cardinal's desk- most of her face and upper body obscured by holographic panels that she worked furiously at.

"Shoot it down, Sister Kate, and have operatives standing by to apprehend the pilot," Cardinal Caterina paused, then, and fixed both the Doctor and Rose with a very heavy stare. "What are you waiting for, a Papal edict? You have your orders. If the pilot survives being shot down, apprehend him!" Rose immediately snapped to what she hoped was attention, giving a sloppy salute that obscured part of her face with her large cuff. The Doctor nodded, shoving his ID card into his bottomless pocket and handing the other to Rose. She took it with a smile, her tongue just barely showing between her teeth as she plunged her hand into her pocket and then grabbed the Doctor's proffered hand.

"The safety of the Vatican is in the best hands it can ever be, Your Grace," the Doctor said, a smile breaking across his features in what he certainly hoped was a reassuring manner. "C'mon then, Sister Tyler! Allons-_y_!" Before the Cardinal could even get a word in edgewise, the two had made a break for the open office door in a rush of fabric and jingling armor. With naught much else to do, the treacherously beautiful blond lowered herself back into her chair and picked up her teacup once again.

"Do you think trusting them was a good idea, Your Grace?" With a questioning look on her light blue and translucent features, Sister Kate moved one of her consoles out of her line of sight. Cardinal Sforza, her face a beautiful impasse, took a sip of her tea.

"I certainly hope so Sister Kate," she muttered, before picking up the crumpled documents that had been retrieved from Father John Smith's pocket in one long-fingered hand. She surveyed the script on them from behind her monocle, taking another sip of her rapidly-cooling tea as she did so.

-/-

* * *

**Wow, the last time I updated this was almost a month ago. Crap. I need to start finishing the last two chapters so I won't run out of them. Second to last is mostly done, but I only vaguely know what I want to do with the last one. Oh boy!**

**So, dat new series of Who. Can't wait for more~**

**-Richie  
**


	4. Chapter 4

**The Methuselah Hunters**

_Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **Doctor Who is property of BBC, Trinity Blood of Sunao Yoshida (may he rest in peace). It's their sandboxes full of toys, and while they're inside for lunch I'm the angry neighbor kid that jumps the fence and puts their action figures in compromising positions.

**Warnings: **Humor, completely made up jargon, an awful lot of running, the requisite 10/Rose flirting and spoilers for Trinity Blood up to but not into Know Faith/Silent Noise and Who up through but not surpassing "The Satan Pit". Disregards the timeline of the varying Great and Bountiful Human Empires because I am lazy. Contains 10 and Rose trussed up in artbook Trinity Blood uniforms (feel free to laugh and/or fangasm).

**A/N: **I am a bad person and I love it. I've also combined Firefly and Bleach before, though the internet is never seeing that. SO YES! Two of my favorite things, Trinity Blood being an old favorite and Doctor Who being a brand new one, combined into one thing! This will either end very well or very badly. Allons-_y_!

**Best read on 3/4 or 1/2 width.**

_Chapter **4**_**  
**

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-/-

"Y' jus' _had _ta' take me to the bloody _Vatican_!" Gunshots rang out through the Old Gardens, chunks of granite and marble flying everywhere as large weapons were discharged with reckless abandon. In the back of the minds of most everyone present was the knowledge that several trees were on fire and that the downed Methuselah craft that had hit the gardens hard and taken out two gazebos and a fountain was primed to explode.

Rose Tyler was not pleased in the slightest and loving every moment of it.

"Well how was _I _supposed to know we'd get here an' be inducted into the _Special Operations Section_?" Cycling through settings on the sonic screwdriver faster than he probably should have been, the Doctor crouched next to Rose behind the base of a large statue of Saint Henriette of Seingalt. He flinched a little closer to the center of the cover provided by the marble statue when a massive slug tore a good-sized hunk of stone out of the corner of it, then continued to fiddle with the screwdriver with his mouth hanging just barely open in an expression of rapt concentration.

"Doesn't matter," Rose said, using the vague reflection in a piece of her armor to see around the corner of the statue and locate the Methuselah that was firing at them, the two other AX operatives and one Inquisition member. His concentration momentarily broken, the Doctor looked up at Rose with his mouth still hanging open slightly and an expression of confusion gracing his features in a way that looked rather good on him. "End'a the day, we still gotta catch us a vampire. Yeah?" She turned back to the Doctor then, a kind and forgiving smile on her face that reached all the way up to her black-lined eyes. That expression quickly turned into a mischievous one, a hint of tongue just barely visible at the corner of her mouth. "So wot's the plan, then?"

"The plan is extraordinarily simple! Easy enough for even you to understand. Simplest plan I've ever made, no plan quite like it you see-" the Doctor's babble was cut short as Rose fixed him with a _look_.

"You haven't got one." It was a statement, not a question. The two of them ducked as part of the statue they were crouching behind was blown into large chunks that narrowly missed hitting the both of them.

"Haven't got one, no." The Doctor had the grace to at least look a little apologetic as he conceded the point, but his features quickly steeled into the dark and very serious visage that at least a hundred thousand planets had learned to fear. "But I've got an inkling of one, and you're going to follow it to the letter." Without preamble his gloved fingers found hers, and they laced together tight enough that Rose thought he might never try to let go. She opened her mouth to ask a question and he promptly beat her to the punch. "You're going to run. You're getting out of this situation, and you're doing it _now._ I'll be right behind you."

"If this is about what that _thing _on that planet said-" Rose had barely enough time to begin to look indignant before her words died in her throat. The Doctor's black look, the one that had inspired a thousand legends of a fearsome Lonely God, was gone. In its place was a pleading one tinted with something she didn't dare try to name, and the hand clasped in hers got a little tighter.

"It's not," he reassured. "I _swear_ it's not. Just please, listen to me. Methuselah are dangerous. In the grand scheme of things they're probably just a few steps down from the _Cybermen_. They're impossibly fast an' completely ruthless. 's why I didn't want us getting involved with the AX, Rose- I didn't want you getting hurt." The two companions ducked as a piece of the unfortunate statue of the Saint of Seingalt was propelled over their heads along with several large-caliber bullets. Rose looked a little worried as she looked back up at the Doctor, but squeezed his hand reassuringly before giving him a kind smile.

"A'right," she conceded. "I should make all sorts of fuss 'bout leavin' you, but I won't. You gon' give me _cover_ t' get outta here?" The blond gestured with a nod of her head to the Methuselah still taking potshots at the assembled Vatican agents. The pleading look that seemed unfortunately etched onto the Doctor's face immediately brightened considerably, and his grin made an immediate comeback.

"_Oh_ yes," he held up the sonic screwdriver as he spoke, the high-pitched keen of the silver and blue device suddenly rising to a deafening pitch before fading into silence. As it did so he made a face like he had just licked something he really shouldn't have- not that the specifics of what he licked ever bothered him. "I've just elevated the screwdriver's sonic output levels to a pitch beyond the scope of natural human hearing. I can hear it, the Methuselah can hear it, but you lot can't. Run!" Without needing to be told twice, Rose grabbed two large fistfuls of her grass-stained white and blue habit and hiked it up before jumping to her feet and booking it as fast as she could out of that portion of the gardens. Behind her she heard the Methuselah let out a guttural yell, sounding both enraged and in pain at the same time. The blond had barely enough time to dive behind a statue of an Archangel before two bullets carved massive divots in the marble.

Grumbling about the state of her habit, Rose picked herself up off the grass and brushed at the white fabric at around knee-height. It had taken the worst damage from her constant running and ducking out of the line of fire, and there were green streaks all over the front of the white and blue garment. Her gloved hands found her wimple and straightened it, situating her hair in a way she hoped looked suitably nun-esque.

"Now what?" Rose grumbled, fisting her hands back into her skirt and hiking it back up again. "Go an' play tea party with the hologram? Find a 31st century _chippy_? I got the _run _part, Doctor, but where do I run _to_?" With a long-suffering sigh the companion took off at a fairly fast pace, weaving between statues until she ducked down a long open corridor between two buildings. Her run dwindled to a fast jog as she turned several corners, weaving deeper and deeper into the massive and beautiful buildings of the Vatican. She kept up the pace until the sounds of gunfire faded into the distance, not stopping until she couldn't do much else but lean against a large column and gasp for breath.

For the thousandth time that day, Rose cursed her heeled boots. She would have continued to curse them in more than just the one language, but a sudden explosion- the downed Methuselah ship had finally gone off- made her jump and whip around to face the way she had come. All around her the windows of the back offices of the Basilica rattled in their casings. The blond fisted her hands in her white and blue skirt and told herself not to go running back into the fray, her gloved hands nearly shaking as she fought herself to do what the Doctor had told her to.

The sound of boots on marble brought the blond back to Earth, and she turned with a swish of her skirt and wimple to face the new arrival. It was a nun, her black hair and exotic features marred with wide-eyed terror. Upon closer inspection the woman's gloves were missing, her wimple was nearly falling out of her rather luxurious curls and the front of her habit was missing two buttons. With a scream the nun finally tripped, falling to her hands and knees with a sob. Rose was at her side in an instant, a hand on her back and the other grasping one of the nun's own to help her to her feet.

"The Methuselah-" the nun began, gasping for breath as she leaned heavily on Rose's shoulder. "That explosion!"

"AX is takin' care of it," Rose assured her, leading the woman to the nearest seat she could find. The blond sat the woman down on the edge of a good-size fountain built into the wall, brushing away a few strands of wisteria that tried to tangle in her hair and the little silver arrows on the edge of her wimple. "Y'alright? I'm Rose, wos y'name?"

"Ele- Eleanor Sutterlin. S- Sister Eleanor Su- Sutterlin." The woman's words hitched every time she tried to breathe, and she broke into a terrified sob once again. Her wimple fell out of her hair and into the fountain, resigning itself to float in the surprisingly deep water. "The Methuselah!" The terrified nun said again, grabbing onto Rose's armored wrists with a fearful urgency.

"I told'ja, AX is takin' care of it. You'll be alright. I know a guy; he's helpin' catch the Methuselah." The blonde's attempts to talk the woman down only seemed to wind her up further, and she looked almost wild as she surveyed the area and gasped in quick breaths. "Y'gotta calm down, Sister! Y'not doing y'self any favors by gettin' so worked up!" Rose freed her wrists from the woman's grasp, instead setting her tanned hands on her skirt and then setting her own gloved ones over them.

"It's coming for me," the Sister gasped. "I- I saw it kill two men in the rectory a- and I just barely escaped with m- with me life!" Large, fat tears dripped down the woman's face as she grasped at her skirt with her bare fingers. Her eyes shifted about the courtyard with all the grace of a trapped animal, watching the exits and not even trying to conceal the primal fear there. Rose's wide lips barely twitched downward in the tiniest of frowns, the Sister's words processing through her mind at a steady pace. Something seemed slightly off, something the Doctor had said…

"It didn't catch you?" Sister Sutterlin looked confused for a moment, completely taken-aback the next. She furrowed her dainty brow into a deep line, the fear still evident in her eyes even though she had begun to put what seemed to be a decently-advanced mind to work.

"I- I dunno," the nun said. She looked unsure as she spoke, her fingers again clenching into her skirt as she seemed to fight the urge to get up and run once again. "But does it matter? You've got to run! You and me both! He's coming for us!"

"M'new here, which way's the rectory?" The Sister's eyes got wide as Rose asked, but she pointed down the only other hallway that led into the open sunny courtyard. The blonde's dark eyebrows furrowed as Sister Sutterlin indicated the way, and her skirts swished about as she twisted to look the way the tanned woman had come. In a steady movement Rose stood, still leaning to hold on to the nun's ungloved hands. Her heavily makeup-adorned face was oddly serious, perhaps even a little sad as she looked Eleanor in the eyes.

"W- what's wrong?" Her dark eyes were wide with fear as she spoke, her lashes clumped into thick spikes by her frightened tears. The Sister grabbed at both of Rose's hands with her own, the movement desperate.

"I think there might be two Methuselah in the Vatican," Rose began. Sister Sutterlin made a strangled and frightened noise in the back of her throat, and Rose continued. "Y'gotta run an' go find someone from the Inquisition, Eleanor. I'm gon' go find the guards."

Rose stood up straight and turned, then. She barely registered the faintest flicker of sound as she did so, focused on her new revelation as she was. She considered it a credit to her past experiences that she didn't scream bloody murder when she nearly collided with the Sister she had just turned away from. Instead she backed up several steps, immediately on guard.

With what she really hoped wasn't her last thought, Rose momentarily agreed with the Doctor's calling her jeopardy-friendly.

"You're too smart for yer own good, girl." Eleanor's- she certainly wasn't a Sister and so it was a bit of a moot point to continue to call her one- voice was a rather cold one when not colored by hysterical fear. Incongruous with her Mediterranean features her voice was tinted with an Irish accent, but that really wasn't the most noticeable point about the suddenly very menacing tan woman in the white habit. No, the noticeable points were the massive claws that her fingers were elongating into, the tips and edges glinting in the courtyard light. "Good thing nobody will miss another dead nun. You're a dime a dozen in this infernal shithole."

"'s light out," Rose stated. The Methuselah paused, her fine eyebrows barely knitting together in the center of her brow for a moment. "'s _light_ out, how are you still _alive_?" Eleanor answered the blond with a slash of her talons. Rose felt fabric rip and something snap in a rather ominous way, and she stumbled out of the way in fumbled movements until the backs of her legs hit the edge of the fountain that the tanned vampire had been sitting on not thirty seconds before. The sound of beads hitting marble reached her ears, but she was too busy trying to stop herself from toppling backwards into the somewhat grimy water behind her.

"Sunscreen," Eleanor answered dryly. In a flicker of movement that the blond just barely caught with her eyes, the tan woman was suddenly right in front of her. One clawed hand immediately had her by the neck, pushing her backwards over the water, while the other menaced her face in a way that reflected the manic glee on the Methuselah's face. "Now, _Rose_," she began, "what d'you say to the Santo Del Cattivo Lupo courtyard being yer final resting place?" The tight-lipped grin on the vampire's face curled back into a feral one, full of sharp teeth like that of a cat. "I'll be sure not to carve y'face up too badly. They'll no doubt need something to identify the body with."

"I'd say I don't die in battle that easily!" With a sudden motion and a rather fearsome yell, Rose grabbed the Methuselah by both wrists and tucked a leg up and under the woman's torso in order to flip her over her head and into the dirty water of the fountain. She unfortunately miscalculated the amount of force she needed, however, and went toppling in backwards herself.

"What d'you think that was, stupid human? Methuselah don't melt in water!" Eleanor, sopping wet, was the first to her feet in the nearly thigh-deep water. She pulled a lily pad from her hair and flung it away with a good amount of vehemence. With her claws she tore at the skirt that clung to her every curve, discarding blue lace and stained white fabric with abandon in order to free up her legs.

"_That_ was one'a the perks of bein' jeopardy-friendly! Y' get taught a little Venusian Aikido." Rose struggled to her own feet, pulling at the weeds and other foliage that had attached themselves to the multitude of silver arrows and pieces of armor that adorned her habit. Her wimple was gone, resting somewhere in the bottom of the fountain. Eleanor began stalking her way towards the blond, weeds and grime trailing after her. "An', you know, vampires _don't_ melt in water." The Methuselah paused at the look of smug triumph on the London girl's face, her clawed hands faltering for a moment. She opened her mouth to insult the girl for parroting her, but the words were cut off. "But sunscreen does."

In what was probably the most amazing example of divine coincidence Rose Tyler had experienced in a good month and a half, the sun chose that moment to come out from behind a small wisp of cloud. The already rather bright Santo Del Cattivo Lupo courtyard seemed to burst into life, flowers and vines reflecting brilliant light in an impressive display of color and beauty. Eleanor screamed, grasping at her face as smoke seemed to rise from her skin, before she burst into flames with a keening shriek and collapsed into the fountain. Rose, pulling vines and lily pads from her person as she went, climbed out of the fountain to make a large puddle on the decorative marble courtyard floor. She threw the last lily pad to the ground at her feet as the sounds of running feet reached her ears.

"Rose!" Before the blond could comprehend what was going on she was being hugged by someone who smelled quite a bit like they had just been blown up. She pushed at the chest of the Time Lord holding her, trying to get him to stop squeezing so tight. The bits and pieces of armor at his neck and all over the rest of him were digging into her chest in a way that was rather uncomfortable. "Rose, you're _sopping _wet." Rose looked up at the Doctor with a somewhat dark expression, though it really didn't do much to counteract the cheeky grin that he was still giving her.

"I threw a Methuselah into a fountain t' melt her sunscreen an' accidentally threw m'self in too. Thanks for showin' up and savin' me, by the way." Irked though it was the explanation was enough for the Doctor. He immediately held his companion out at arm's length to survey the condition she had managed to get herself into, ignoring her slightly miffed remark. Her white habit was now a dirty khaki shade with interspersed green bits, her rosary was completely missing- that was all over the courtyard floor, though, and was therefore a lost cause- her wimple was gone and her makeup was smudged. The front chest area of her habit was also ripped wide open, along with the front of her bra. _Oh._

The Doctor immediately pulled what remained of his rather burnt cloak from his shoulders and wrapped Rose in it until she looked very much like a soot-covered Eskimo.

-/-

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**So the next chapter isn't done. That's actually a really big problem, such as it was. So I'm going to wait until it is to post this, and then I'll make you wait for that one too. My problem at the moment is that I don't much like Ten. I like Nine, Eight and Eleven more than I like Ten. HENCE THE PROBLEM, SINCE THIS IS KIND OF ABOUT TEN AND ROSE, YANNO.**

**There might be a sequel to this involving the Pope, Rose, Ten and a great big forest spirit named Totoro. Or maybe Venice and a bloke named Casanova, I'm not sure yet. Things don't always happen in the right order.  
**

**-Richie  
**


	5. Chapter 5

**The Methuselah Hunters**

_Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **Doctor Who is property of BBC, Trinity Blood of Sunao Yoshida (may he rest in peace). It's their sandboxes full of toys, and while they're inside for lunch I'm the angry neighbor kid that jumps the fence and puts their action figures in compromising positions.

**Warnings: **Humor, completely made up jargon, an awful lot of running, the requisite 10/Rose flirting and spoilers for Trinity Blood up to but not into Know Faith/Silent Noise and Who up through but not surpassing "The Satan Pit". Disregards the timeline of the varying Great and Bountiful Human Empires because I am lazy. Contains 10 and Rose trussed up in artbook Trinity Blood uniforms (feel free to laugh and/or fangasm).

**A/N: **I am a bad person and I love it. I've also combined Firefly and Bleach before, and though I promised that the internet would never see that I eventually ended up posting it and it's available on my profile. SO YES! Two of my favorite things, Trinity Blood being an old favorite and Doctor Who being a brand new one, combined into one thing! This will either end very well or very badly. Allons-_y_!

* * *

-/-

In what Rose was beginning to sense was a theme, she cursed her clothing choices. Of course what she had been stuck in this time wasn't actually her choice, but she still cursed silently and fluently in as many inventive ways as she could as she tried very hard to breathe around the corset she was wearing. Being the body-double of the unfortunately sick Lady Angelique de Huono, Baroness of Nottingham and foreign dignitary, was not turning out to be the exciting undercover operation she had almost hoped for. That probably had something to do with the twenty pounds of skirt and other dressings she was wearing- never mind the large sawed-off shotgun that had been buckled to her upper thigh against her wishes.

All-in-all, though, she had it better than the Doctor. He was wearing fifty pounds of Vatican guard armor and was standing at a very fidgety attention behind and to the left of the altar. The worst thing she really had to worry about, besides the gun strapped to her thigh and whether or not she would be breathing in twenty minutes, was making sure that the bejeweled hat and circlet she was wearing didn't fall off her head. He had to worry about those fifty pounds of armor, visibility through his helmet and not tipping his halberd over onto the floor or the altar.

At some point the Pope had entered the cathedral, because a hush fell over the already rather quiet crowd. Rose resisted the urge to fidget in the pew, settling instead for crossing her hands in her lap and trying her best to look serene. As the procession passed her she caught a glimpse of the small boy in the brilliantly white and gold Papal vestments at the front and center of it, a massive gold staff topped with an ornate cross in one of his hands. For a moment she entertained the idea that the boy was cute, if not anxious-looking and a little wide-eyed, but then she reconsidered. He was the Pope after all; it was just a little odd.

Rose suddenly got a much better view of said Pope as she and the Doctor, almost in unison, focused their attention on a light that had begun flashing on the altar along with a loud stream of beeps. She jumped to her feet and dove in front of the Papal procession, grabbing the fifteen-year-old religious leader by the shoulders and pulling him to her chest as she rolled them both out of the way of what was suddenly a very large fireball instead of an altar. They came to a stop in a tangle of rich vestments and multiple skirts, the frightened mousy-haired boy cowering against her as chaos erupted in the cathedral. Both their hats had been knocked clean away, and his light brown hair was flopping into his eyes as he whimpered in fear. Rose held onto him and patted him as reassuringly as she could, waiting for the roar of the explosion to die down and for her hearing to properly restore itself.

"Y'alright?" Rose asked, looking down at the boy whose life she had just saved. "M'Rose Tyler, from Cardinal Sforza's Special Operations Section." Not waiting for the boy to collect himself, she let him go and peered over the top of the pew. The altar was gone, shrapnel and burning debris littering the cathedral. There was a burning pit where the explosion had gone off, crackling merrily and starting to spread without anyone to curb its progress. "Doctor?!" She called, looking for some movement where she had seen the man last. If he could hear her over the cacophony of panicked noise in the cathedral, he didn't answer. A trembling hand found one of her wrists, and the blond turned around to face the frightened teenager she had just saved. He was quite literally shaking like a leaf, shrinking in on himself and nearly drowning in his vestments. Rose's worry immediately turned to the waifish boy, and she gave him a reassuring smile.

"T-thank you," Pope Alessandro XVIII stuttered. He looked apologetic as he held onto Rose's hands, and she furrowed her brow at the expression.

"Quite alright, we do this sort of thing all the time." With a clang and crunch of armor, the Doctor crouched next to the duo behind the pew. Rose's smile quickly gained a tinge of relief, and she immediately grabbed his proffered gloved hand with one of her own. "Hello Alessandro, I'm the Doctor!" The Pope shook like a leaf as the Doctor smiled at him, and Rose let him cling to her as she patted him awkwardly on the back of the head with her free hand. His sooty eyebrows rising, the Time Lord gave the blond a very pointed look that conveyed his exact feelings on her picking up strays. No matter how adorable the boy might be, and no matter how much he seemed to like Rose, this was one kid the Doctor was _not _letting come along _thankyouverymuch_.

Rose returned the look and continued to comfort the young religious leader that clung to the front of her beautiful, if not ruined, dress.

"Didn't the Inquisition sweep the church 'fore Mass?" Carefully letting go of Alessandro, the blond turned to the Doctor as she spoke. "How'd anyone get a _bomb_ in 'ere?"

"Inside job, no doubt." The Doctor fiddled with the sonic screwdriver as he spoke, already having stripped off his heavy leather and metal gloves in order to gain a greater amount of dexterity. "We could be looking at any number of radical terrorist groups- there's quite a few of them in this time period, you know. Neue Vatican, the Rosenkreuz Orden, the Albion Methuselah Rebellion Army, they've all got reasons to take potshots at young Alec here." He paused, then, his expression looking as though it had frozen halfway between thoughtful and consternation. "Though at this point right now I think only Neue Vatican an' a bunch of independent warmongers from the Empire want anything t' do with tryin' to blow him up. That quite possibly makes this a very volatile political situation." Almost as soon as the words had left his mouth, a look that seemed to rather resemble horror crossed his features. "We can't let the Inquisition get involved."

"Why not?" Rose asked. She was torn between listening to the Time Lord and keeping the teenage Pope from hyperventilating. The poor boy was already shaking like a leaf in a gale and getting worse, and looked as though he might be going into shock.

"Imagine a bull in a china shop," the Doctor began. He looked deadly serious even as he whipped the screwdriver around several times to take a reading from the air, continuing his speech as he did so. "As silly as the metaphor is, it sort of works- now imagine that the china is all international relations and even so much as someone _looking_ at that china wrong could make th' rest of the china start hurling bombs and targeting other pieces of china with orbital _ion cannons_. With me so far?" He wasn't exactly looking, as focused as he was on the readings on the sonic screwdriver, but Rose nodded anyway. She felt Alessandro let her hand go and she turned the smile on him distractedly without really looking.

"I'm guessin' the Inquisition's the bull?" The Doctor turned a brilliant smile on her as she spoke, a good amount of pride on his face. She smiled back, a little bit of cheek tinting the expression in her normal, natural way.

"The Inquisition's most _definitely_ the bull," he began, "an' we've got to get Alec to safety before they call in the big guns." The Doctor looked over towards the religious leader, then, his expression immediately cycling through surprise and a slight amount of fear before settling on indignation and then something that looked a good deal like the Oncoming Storm. Rose's focus switched straight to the scared fifteen-year-old, her heavily lined eyes widening in unconcealed shock as she registered a very important problem.

The Pope was gone.

_Bollocks._

"Alessandro?!" Rose immediately jumped to her feet, turning quickly with her ruined skirts twisting in the debris on the floor. In a clanging and crashing of armor the Doctor was up right after her, sonic screwdriver held in one hand and surveying the rapidly-spreading fire that was beginning to take over the room. "Alessandro!" Rose yelled again, this time worried and a little frightened. The boy in question made a squeak that was lost in the crackling of flames and the panic that had taken over the cathedral, petrified and shaking so hard that he couldn't think to reach for the hand that held his neck in a vice grip.

The face of the boy's attacker was a cruel one, twisted into a fanged scowl with hard green eyes full of malice. Her fingers elongated into ten inch silver spikes- the edges and tips no doubt as sharp as a knife- and two of those fingers were lightly tracing lines down the Pope's cheek that beaded with bright red droplets of blood in their wake. The girl's habit was spattered with burnt holes, blackened edges contrasting starkly with the bright blue fabric. She scratched another line and her scowl turned into a wicked smile, her small pink tongue peeking out from between her dangerous fangs to taste the red fluid dripping down the frightened religious leader's cheek.

"Ah," the Doctor began. "Our inside agent."

"But that's-" Rose began, her focus flipping between the Doctor and the Methuselah girl in the novice's habit several times before settling on the girl and her captive. "That's the novice from this mornin'! She wasn't a Methuselah then, was she?"

"_Yeah_, I imagine she kinda was." The Doctor only spared Rose a cursory glance as he focused on the pink-haired Methuselah in the novice's habit. His stance shifted forward with a clatter of armor on armor, and he fixed the girl with a dark gaze. "What is it you want?" He asked, the tone of his voice belying just how genuinely interested he was. "Th' dissolution of th' Catholic Church? Freedom for all Methuselah? Th' death of th' Pope? New world order? Whatever it is, you're goin' about getting it all wrong."

The Methuselah girl bristled, her grip on the frightened teen's neck tightening imperceptibly. The boy cried out, and she snapped at him with her impossibly sharp teeth.

"Wot wou'djou know, y' filthy Vatican dog? All I wan'-" What the inside agent wanted would remain unknown, however, as at that moment a portion of the ceiling decided it was the perfect time to explode inward. The Doctor and Rose were showered with chunks of masonry and painted plaster as a massive crash shook the ground around them. The dust began to settle as a hellish whine pervaded the room, growing steadily louder with each passing moment. One glance at the Doctor from Rose confirmed her suspicions- the bull he had spoken of had deigned it time to arrive.

In front of them was the back of an impressive man. His suit of armor gleamed in the waning natural light, the red and gold tabard worn over the top of it a crimson warning to his enemies. The hellish whine, quickly rising to a fever pitch, came from the massive figure's spinning weapon. With an artful shift the man slid into a fighting stance, swinging the weapon around so that the spinning head threatened the pink-haired Methuselah agent.

"You will release His Holiness, vampire!" The Inquisitor's ultimatum was met with an angry screech and a flash of claws as the Methuselah girl threw her captive to the ground and raked her deadly pointed fingers through the air. The silver claws went flying from her fingers, and though the Inquisitor moved out of the way in a surprising display of agility they embedded themselves only inches from where Rose and the Doctor peered over the pew they had taken cover behind. The companions shared a wide-eyed expression before the Doctor noticed the silver beginning to bubble and hiss against the wood.

"Rose, _run_!" He ordered. In a clatter of bent armor plates he shoved the blond away from the silver spikes, his wide-eyed expression one of fear. Rose struggled to her feet, but her ankles were caught in the twisted remains of her dress and she toppled back down to the ground. She hit the marble floor with a whump and a surprised epithet, struggling to rip her skirt free and tangling herself further in the process.

Three things happened then.

First, Rose felt her skirt tear quite to pieces as someone with hands the size of dinner plates picked her up by the waist and hauled her into the air so fast she felt the world fall through space for a moment.

The second Rose barely had time to register, as one moment she was looking at a sea of smashed and broken pews and the next she was behind the Methuselah girl and the teenage Pope.

Third, the claws embedded in the wooden pew exploded with enough force to make her ears ring. More than that, the few remaining stained glass windows that had survived the force of the initial bombing shattered outward with heartbreaking crashes.

"Doctor?" Rose's initial question was faint, and she barely registered that she was being carried in one arm against the shoulder of the Inquisitor- like a toddler. "Doctor?!" she yelled, coming to her senses and beginning to squirm against the man that had just saved her life.

"'m alright!" Three rows of pews back from the explosion, the Doctor's head popped up from behind his impromptu cover. He shucked dented and utterly useless armor from his skinny frame as he rose, revealing the vestments he wore underneath.

"My Lady-" the Inquisitor that held Rose began, looking mildly awkward under his helmet as he tried valiantly to keep her from falling out of his grip. At the height he held her, Rose's décolletage was at about his eye-level. "My Lady_, please_-" the angry blond continued her efforts to be let down, regardless of the pleas of her savior. "My Lady Huono, your safety does not come before that of His Holiness-"

"'m not Angelique de Huono! 'm 'er bloody _body double_- look out!" Rose ducked as more of the hissing silver nails flew from the Methuselah's fingers and straight at her head, then let out an enraged yelp as the Inquisitor shifted his grip from her thighs to her bum so as to keep her from falling. With his other hand he brandished his massive weapon- the head of which began to spin and emit that same high-pitched keening from a minute before. Before Rose could express her opinion as to the contrary, the large man rushed the Methuselah with a feral yell.

The Methuselah jumped out of the way just in time to avoid a crushing blow from the screaming mace that the Inquisitor brandished, and for good reason. The rubble-strewn floor of the Cathedral exploded where he made contact, slivers of stone and wood zipping about like miniature projectiles.

"'y gon' get me _killed_! Put me down," Rose ordered. The Inquisitor attempted to put her down gently, but with the sheer amount of armor he sported the gesture was rendered largely moot. She stumbled and nearly fell on her face, but recovered quickly and tore away what was left of her heavy skirts to reveal the bloomers she wore underneath and the massive gun that had been strapped to her thigh. The blond quickly stumbled her way across the broken floor to where young Alessandro still lay in a dazed heap where the Methuselah had thrown him.

Behind her, the Inquisitor rushed at the inside agent once again. They collided in a shower of sparks, the rotating mace head of the knight's weapon still making its shrill noise. The Methuselah's fingernails never seemed to end, re-growing almost as quickly as she could shoot them as explosive projectiles. The Doctor ducked as the Inquisitor got in a lucky shot to the girl's stomach and sent her flying just over his head to crash into a far wall. The exquisite marble façade crumbled under the force of her impact, but the pink-haired Methuselah just gave a fanged grin and jumped right back at her attacker with a feral scream.

"Alessandro?" Rose sank to the floor next to the dazed religious leader, quickly checking for a pulse before turning his head towards her and gently patting his unblemished cheek. "Alessandro, y'alright?" She was awarded with a faint groan from the boy, and he blinked owlishly up at her before flinching as something exploded behind the blond AX agent. She gently pulled him to his feet, carefully wiping the crusting blood from the cut on his cheek and giving him a reassuring smile as she tried to keep herself between the Pope and the brunt of the danger. "C'mon," she started, "lets getcha outta 'ere, yeah?" Alessandro nodded meekly, his eyes wide with fear.

"S-" Alessandro tried to begin, "Sister Tyler? W- What about-"

"The Doctor?" Rose smiled reassuringly as the boy nodded, and turned to look over her shoulder at the fight going on behind her. The placating smile slid from her face and she ushered the young religious leader towards the service door behind the now-destroyed altar. "He'll be alright, jus' buyin' time 'til Cardinal Sforza gets th' rest'a th' AX mobilized." She bit back an angry epithet as she realized that the service door- their safest route out of the cathedral- was barred shut by a collapsed column. "Doctor!" she turned as she yelled, bits of hair that had fallen free of her complicated hairstyle getting in her face as she did so.

"Bit busy!" the Time Lord ducked and sidestepped an angry attack by the Methuselah as he answered. He ducked again just in time for a wide swing by the armored Inquisitor to fly over his head, the spinning mace still screaming as it went. "That's _quite _enough of that, _thank you_," he pointed the Sonic Screwdriver at the Inquisitor's weapon, and with a high-pitched whine that was nearly drowned out by the screaming mace he shut the impressive weapon down. As the armored man whirled around to face the Doctor he found himself faced with the business end of the sonic multi-tool.

With no more warning than a flash of light and a high-pitched whine, the man's armor seized up at every joint with a lurch.

"Blasphemous _traitor-_" he began, only to stop short as the Doctor put his finger to his lips and shushed the Inquisitor- actually _shushed _him- and then turned to the pink-haired Methuselah girl that had backed off to a safe distance. She looked wary, but her lips still curled in a snarl that revealed her razor-sharp fangs.

"_Right_ then! Now that he's taken care of I'll skip the introductions an' get right to the point, I suppose," the Doctor looked over towards where Rose and Pope Alessandro XVIII stood and the inside agent followed his line of sight with her own green eyes. "Why d'you want him dead?"

"Woz'it matta t'you?" the Methuselah's green eyes snapped back towards the Time Lord, fine pink brows knitting in anger as her lip curled further into a sneer. "Y'jus' buyin' time 'til y'_murderin_' _friends_ get 'ere!" As she spoke she brandished her sharp silver nails at the black-clad alien, her pointed teeth lending an extra bite to her thick Northern accent. "Y'don' _care _why it is I _done_ it- y'jus care tha'ah _tried_!"

"_Oh_, come on though," the Doctor made a face as he spoke, looking rather incredulous as he stuffed his hands in his trouser pockets. "Y'didn't just fly inta this _blind_, right? There had to've been a _plan_ at _some_ point- you know, 'Step One: Steal Vatican Secrets, Step Two: Kill the Pope-'"

"Why d'you _care_?!" The Time Lord's focus turned from idle examination of the ruined cathedral ceiling to careful regarding of the Methuselah across the aisle of pews from him. The look in his eyes wasn't accusatory or angry, but instead oddly blank. Still the pink-haired girl- relatively young for a Methuselah but still much older than most humans- felt utterly small under the power of the Time Lord's gaze. She crouched low on the wooden bench she stood on, one hand grasping the back for support and the other poised to strike with her explosive nails. "Most powerful man in'na worl'- I try'ta _kill_'im an' you wanna know _why_?" she bit the words out with incredulity, and her eyes were full of confusion.

"Yes," the Doctor said. The girl's wide green eyes blinked in surprise at the power behind the simple word. "Alessandro's the most powerful man in the world, but he's still just a _boy_. Fifteen years old, can you imagine?" he gestured towards the boy in question as he spoke, and the young brunette reflexively flinched towards the blond that held him. "He sits on one of the most powerful thrones in the world right now an' he's treated like a _puppet _by every last _warmonger _in the clergy. To them he's nothing more than a _placeholder_- easily cowed and molded into whatever they see _fit_," the Doctor's eyes, burdened with the weight of what seemed like ages, hardened. "Fifteen, an' they're telling him to order a brand new Armageddon by starting a war with the Empire. That boy hasn't got a cruel _bone_ in his _body. _He's treated like a piece on a political _chessboard_ by his own _siblings_, an' you want to _kill_ him because he's not the one making the moves-"

"Killin' 'im wosn't-" the Methuselah interrupted, "it wosn't th'plan!" The Doctor blinked, the hard look gone in a mercurial flash as his interest was piqued. The girl nearly stumbled over her words in an effort to get them out quickly. "It- it wos jus' s'posed t'be reconnaissance, nuffin' _dangerous_. Eleanor an' Davey, though- they was spoilin' fer a fight an' I couldn' stop 'em! Davey bombed th' Square an' Eleanor came t' look fer me, an-" the pink-haired girl blinked away tears as she broke off, but she didn't retract her explosive claws. "M'friends're _dead_ an' I- I wan' th' Vatican t'_pay_ fer wot they done!"

"An' you think killing a _child _is the way to go about doing it?" the Doctor's hard look was back, a grim cloud settling over his features as he stared down the Methuselah. "More than anyone he's _innocent_- you've got _nothing_ to gain by killing him."

"It'll make me _feel bet'a_," the girl snarled.

"An' it'll make Alessandro a _martyr_!" as the Doctor gestured over towards the young religious leader and Rose, the boy shrunk towards his protector again. The boy was quaking in his dirtied vestments, large eyes brimming with fearful tears. The Time Lord stepped forward and suddenly he was earnest- trying his best to get the girl dressed in the remains of a blue Novice's habit to listen to him. "You kill him an' you've signed the _death warrant_ for every Methuselah _left_ in the civilized world. It'll be _open season _on your kind for men like him," the alien gestured back towards the Inquisitor he had incapacitated- though the man had begun struggling to regain control of his suit of armor. "An' men like _him_, hunting a Methuselah? One of _you_? They don't care _who_ gets caught in the crossfire. Kill Alessandro an' you start another _Armageddon_."

Instead of an answer, the Methuselah gave a feral-sounding scream and jumped at the Pope and Rose. She was almost faster than the eye could see, simply a blur of pink and blue as she made her attempt at revenge. Alessandro didn't even have enough time to blink before the inside agent was in front of the two of them, her fangs bared and her claws poised to strike. Rose reeled back, one hand fumbling for the catch on the bindings holding the shotgun to her leg and the other hand pushing Alessandro behind her.

The smoky, debris-filled air of the bombed-out cathedral rang out with the high-pitched whine of the Sonic Screwdriver, and the Methuselah girl suddenly doubled over in pain before falling- unconscious- to the marble floor. Her long silver claws slowly retracted, a bit of dark blood trickling from her nose.

"Wha-" Rose stepped back from the prone body of the inside agent, pushing young Alessandro further away as well. The boy had no qualms with the constant directing, preferring to cling tightly to the blonde's arm as he tried to make himself inconspicuous. The provisional AX agent looked up from the body of the girl to meet the Doctor's eyes, and she couldn't help but think that the man looked so _tired _for a moment. "How'd y'do that, then?"

"Her rosary's silver an' she's been touchin' it with bare skin- means whatever mutation the bacillus formed when she was turned gave 'er immunity t'the element where other Methuselah would've been severely burned," the Time Lord said. He stashed the Sonic away in a pocket and crossed the ruined cathedral to kneel beside the girl, checking for a pulse before carefully lifting one of her hands from the floor. "Took a chance an' tried settin' up a resonation pattern in what I_ assumed_ were 'er silver bones."

"You _assumed_," Rose said the words carefully, as though she wasn't sure she had heard them correctly.

"_Correctly_, I might add," the Doctor dropped the Methuselah's hand and rose to his feet.

"Bet'a than resonatin' _concrete_, yeah?" the blond turned and busied herself with dusting Alessandro off, leaving the Doctor to look awkward in his singed vestments. He looked almost like he wanted to say something, but wasn't quite sure how to go about vocalizing it.

He was saved the trouble of speaking as the back door of the cathedral finally burst open, throwing splinters of burning wood and bits of debris everywhere as their phenomenally tardy back-up agents rushed into the church.

-/-

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**That awkward moment when half of this chapter was rotting on my hard drive for an entire year and I just wrote the other half in like a week because I forced myself to watch a Ten episode to get characterization and wordage correct**

**But so yeah. Fun things happened in this chapter, which is very late by the way. They saved the Pope, the girl from like chapter two was really a Methuselah, Ten _shushed _Petros Orsini (it works on everyone in the universe but it only works once!) and other things happened as well. Like Doctor-y lectures.  
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**Sorry this took a year, though in my defense I don't think anyone's really reading this.  
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**Reviews are love.  
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